A wonderful example of synchronicity

Good news regarding the Brontë Birthplace in The Guardian:

Campaigners have saved the birthplace of the Brontë sisters and are now fundraising to turn the building into a cultural and education centre – helped by a man with a link to the literary family.

Nigel West, who traces a family connection to Charlotte Brontë’s husband, made a “significant donation” [£5,000 according to the information on the crowdfunding site] to the crowdfunding appeal, which aims to transform 72-74 Market Street in Thornton, Bradford, into a tourist destination. [...]

None of the Brontë sisters gave birth to children, though Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette, died while pregnant in 1855. Her husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, moved back to his native Ireland and took up residence in Hill House in Banagher after her death, where he lived until he died.

That house was inherited by Nicholls’ cousin, Florrie, and when she died in 1959 it passed to her nephew Jim West – Nigel’s father.

West, who lives in West Yorkshire and is a member of the Brontë society, said: “My father was 37 at the time, and the property wasn’t thought to be worth much, so he passed it on to the church.”

The property changed hands several times and is now run as a B&B called Charlotte’s Way – maintaining the Brontë links. In the early 20th century a painting was discovered in the house, stuck on top of a cupboard. It was of the three sisters and now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery; known as the “pillar portrait” – it was painted by Branwell, who originally included himself in the picture but then painted over himself and inserted a pillar into the image.

West, 63, is a retired project manager for IBM. He said he made the donation to the campaign to transform 72-74 Market Street partly to honour the legacy of his father, who died two years ago, and also because he is passionate about the idea of it being used to help educate children, especially those from Bradford, which contains some of the most deprived wards in the country.

“I went to Leeds Grammar School thanks to a direct grant, and then on to York University, and without that start in education I would not have had the career I had,” he said.

“It will be amazing to secure the Brontë birthplace for future generations,” he added. “The plans to make this an important community place for Bradford and to coincide with Bradford as UK City of Culture 2025 is a wonderful prospect.”

The crowdfunding campaign is being fronted by Christa Ackroyd, a Bradford-born journalist who fronted regional news programmes for both the BBC and ITV for many years.

She said: “Sometimes on this journey to safeguard the Brontë legacy you stumble across something so unexpected, so wonderful, that you know you are on the right path. It sent shivers down our spines when we heard he wanted to do something both as a legacy to his late father, who inherited Arthur’s home in Ireland, but also because of Nigel’s passionate belief in the power of education and our plan to use the Brontë story to inspire the next generation to achieve all their ambitions, no matter what stumbling blocks they encounter.

“Nigel is very modest about his family connection, but the fact we have support from a living descendant of Charlotte Brontë’s husband – the man who stayed behind when all the children were gone to look after their father Patrick – is a wonderful example of synchronicity.” (David Barnett)

Los Angeles Times interviews Susanna White.

S. W.: In all the period dramas which I have directed, from Carey Mulligan in “Bleak House” to Ruth Wilson in “Jane Eyre,” my approach has always been that it is a complete accident of fate when our piece of DNA arrives on the planet — we’d be the same person whether we were born in 1670 or 1970. (Katherine Jakeaways)

In The New York Times, Emily Yoshida pens an article about 'Sofia Coppola and All the Sad Girls'.

Her films sit in a rich tradition of art about melancholy made by women for women: The Brontë sisters spun Gothic romance epics about ghosts and girls; Emily Dickinson’s poems were posthumously embraced by those who knew what it meant to feel like Nobody; and L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” features the titular heroine dressing up as a corpse and having her friends send her off for a river burial, with disastrous results. In the 1990s, when Ms. Coppola started her film career, somber musicians like Fiona Apple and Shirley Manson reigned, parents of teenagers were hand-wringing about cutting and bulimia, and books about morbid adolescent girls like “Reviving Ophelia” flew off the shelves.

Teatime at Haworth with the Brontës

The Times has a tribute to artist Sonia Lawson, who died in May.

At the same time the preoccupation with the role of the woman, and the frustration with domestic imprisonment took centre stage. A visit to the Brontë museum at Haworth in 1981 — and with it the reminder that the Brontë sisters had to write under pseudonyms and at the end of a dull working day — led Sonia to paint three enormous canvases of the sisters, including Night Writing, the Brontës [which is not the one featured in the article; the one illustrating the article is actually Teatime at Haworth with the Brontës].

Apollo has an article on a visit to the Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition at the British Library.

Night Writing, the Brontës

Fantasy orders a certain kind of creation – you can see it in the microscopic handwriting, fake frontispieces and hand-drawn maps of the Brontë sisters’ girlhood Glass Town stories of the 1820s, and in Jeannette Ng’s cramped notes for Under the Pendulum Sun (2017), with their chatter of possibility, improvisation and allusion. (Will Wiles)

A day in the life of comedian and musician Bill Bailey in The Telegraph:

11.30pm 

Roll into bed. I’m reading Jane Eyre. I mix up classics with autobiographies on audio, particularly if they’re read by the author.

Exclaim reviews Heaven Knows, PinkPantheress's debut album.

The production is so multifaceted and gorgeous that it almost threatens to upstage PinkPantheress's breathy, feather-light vocals — but her soft delivery effectively subverts the tender melodrama of her words, and she deadpans lyrics written with the bleeding-heart rawness of a Brontë novel. "I just had a dream I was dead / And I only cared 'cause I was taken from you" she deadpans amidst the Spanish guitars of "Mosquito," cleverly personifying her bank account as a lover. (Alex Hudson)

Both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are among the 10 best novels written by women according to El placer de la lectura (Spain).